Toward a Bioregional State

Launched to provide an information service connected with _Toward a Bioregional State, the book; the blog is the commentary, your questions and my answers, and news from around the world related to the issues of sustainability and unsustainability in a running muse on various issues of concern or inspiration.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Fresh Shoots from a Dead Tree: The Bioregional State Compared and Contrasted to Green and Libertarian Ideologies, Pt. 3/4

(Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein and Vice Presidential Candidate Cheri Honkala were arrested outside the site of the second debate in October 2012. Stein and Honkala attempted to enter the debate hall at Hofstra University, but were refused entry by police because they "lacked credentials"--though being legal presidential candidates.)

Part Three: Still Think Only an Informal Party Will Get You To Sustainability? Or That ‘Neutral Markets’ Will Be Allowed to Work for You

In this continuing series, there are two major difficulties in expecting informal parties alone to work toward sustainability. To recap, there was the discussion of the inherent 'internal' difficulty in expecting one party vehicle to capture the many variants of greenness.

"As I argue in Toward a Bioregional State, ecological salvation through any singular informal party is unlikely, given more competitive parties are the only check on unsustainable gatekeeping and the political corruption involved in environmental degradation...The idea of moving a singular political party into the state and then reorienting the state from only that singular political party basis is a faulty model of sustainable change. Instead, the state should be reoriented first to generate a more competitive party framework to remove the gatekeeping of any party--because the grand majority of the population supports a combination of green sentiment in many countries worldwide."

There are two other stumbling blocks, from 'outside.' In addition to the stumbling block of the many variants of greenness (the 'internal' difficulty), there is the 'outside' overwhelming evidence that the state structure itself is the source of corruption keeping us from moving toward sustainability. So it is required to be addressed first.

Two variants are discussed with examples.

The first is open systemic vote fraud, perpetuated by corrupt unsustainable incumbent parties. They are unable (or unwilling to be representative enough) to win elections legally so they utilize their incumbent powers in the state to maintain power criminally. They want to keep power and want to keep moving toward unsustainable policies. This is despite the majority of the world already with a different 'green' opinion.

The other variant of state crime is the intentional internal destabilization of challenging parties or mass manipulation of society at large when such movements or parties have half a chance to win an election legally. This is a more openly violent form of repression keeping unsustainability in place that comes into play when vote fraud is hardly enough. Typically, both strategies are utilized in tandem.

For instance, Greens in Germany have been co-opted internally by the same unsustainable organizations (see previous post) they were once opposed to. This seems to have come with political assassinations of some of its key Green members over ten years ago.

Another example is how the small government, pro-market, Libertarian ideas in the U.S.A. have been co-opted ('intentional internal destabalization') to serve instead as legitimation for organizations and policies it once opposed: monopoly-protecting, corporate-subsidized, forced devolution of public services as described in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein6 min 46 sec

A third example more akin to "variant two" would be how Green and Libertarian candidates in the U.S.A. get arrested if they attempt to get into closed party televised debates. This is because these ‘debates’ are hosted privately by the Democratic/Republican Parties or the television or media networks themselves instead of being open to all parties.

In short, working only on informal parties is akin to providing only novel support frameworks for legitimating unsustainability than a project for sustainability-- because by themselves they are unable to win. Without formal institutional changes, they are unable to win. The game is pre-rigged from top to bottom before the election even starts or it is rigged after the fact by vote fraud. Thus, the contexts of the formal game itself require changing to get to sustainability. That is what the book Toward a Bioregional State is about.

Why do you expect anything from informal party challenges by themselves? When they face a political arrangement of pre-rigged formal institutions, later vote fraud (originally or in the recount), and even open repression? Choose a different path: formal institutional change. Expecting a singular informal party by itself to get anywhere toward sustainability and away from corruption requires choosing formal institutional additions that create a more competitive democracy and a more representative and sustainable development policy innately in the first place from that.

"The truth which neither the traditional right nor left wishes to admit, is that broadly enfranchised, local grassroots efforts to identify with and care for natural regions are so powerful, so ultimately democratic, and so basically popular with…people that they threaten the huge, entrenched political organizations on both sides." –Robert Theyer

That’s the non-ideological, cross-ideological, common ecological self-interest discussed in part one. As said in that section, “We should reconceptualize the whole basis of politics here, to take into account the Local Wing versus the National Wing. In the National Wing, they use whatever flavor of the month ideology to gatekeep against the Local Wing.” This goes for some wings of the global green movement as co-opted, from the current crop of national green parties in Germany, as well as the 'uses' of third party frameworks in Europe and the United States—Green or Libertarian. (As for the 'uses' of third parties by other parties, there is the case of Republicans attempting 'to hire' (really to bribe) the Green Party by Republicans funding the Green campaign to run against a Democrat that the Republicans wanted to unseat in New Mexico. The Republicans could have attempted to win elections by being more representative of course, though for them it was easier to remain unrepresentative and to attempt to pay another party. This would contribute to split some Democratic voters away from the Democratic incumbent--thus making it easier for the unrepresentative Republican Party to win with a lower plurality. The Green party turned down the offer of the Republican Party to fund its campaign. Republicans have as well run artificial Democrats in Michigan to attempt to split up the vote to so the Republicans could win with even lower pluralities. As mentioned in the book:

"[Like the Democrats,...] Republicans are hardly more desirous of being adaptable, representative, or reflective of the voters. Republicans in New Mexico, like the Democrats there, instead concentrate on finding ways to maintain their same policies without having a voter base. New Mexico and Michigan Republicans simply find it easier to play divide and conquer, entirely ignoring voter appeals as a route to win elections, showing voter appeals can be entirely absent for a party to win: “Republicans tried to bribe Greens in New Mexico to run against vulnerable Democrats. [Additionally, in another state,...] Republicans recruited phony candidates to run as Democrats in Michigan…. The Greens, to their credit, refused [Republican] Dendahl’s offer, which the Greens said was as much as $250,000, and did not field candidates for the Congressional seats. The New Mexico attorney general said the bribe attempt demonstrated ‘an attempt to manipulate the election process,’ but the offer was not illegal under state law. Idle question: Since when is bribery legal?"

Ten Examples of Current Vote Fraud, Open Corruption, and State Incumbent Crime Stopping Isolated Attempts at Party Challenges

The following points discuss current examples of vote fraud, open corruption, and state incumbent crime that crushed (or is still crushing) informal party attempts at sustainability. The point of assembling these examples is to convince challengers that the first strategy change of any of these third party attempts is to work on formal institutional change instead.

1. The Belgian Greens, Ousted by Vote Fraud in 2003

First, the Belgian Greenswere shunted out via vote fraud several years ago with a combination of 'variant one' (vote fraud) and 'variant two' (open repression and mass manipulation of society).

"During the 1970s citizens' movements, most of them environmentally oriented, merged into political parties in various countries around the world, from the Green parties in Belgium--the first to win seats in a national parliament to the Values party in New Zealand." [Spretnak and Capra 1986, 172].

So Belgium should be the first place we look for how formal corruption is more responsible for unsustainability being maintained:

"The political party Agalev was officially founded in 1982 [it has hence changed it name to 'Groen!']. It remains separate from the social movement. Prominent members of the movement Agalev, such as founder Versteylen choose not to join the political party Agalev. In the municipal elections of 1982 the party performed particularly well winning more than 10% in several municipalities. In its first periods in parliament the party functions as a protest party forcing the other parties to take more action against environmental pollution and Third World poverty. The party campaigns on specific environmental issues, such as local anti-nuclear energy protests. In the 1999 elections Agalev and its Walloon sister [Green] party Ecolo performed exceptionally well. A scandal surrounding dioxin [in] 'for consumption' chickens, just before the elections plays an important role in the party's performance. The party won 7.0% of the vote and nearly doubled its seats from 5 to 9. The Greens joined the first cabinet....The cabinet further consisted of the liberal Flemish Liberals and Democrats (VLD), [the] Reformist Movement (MR) and the Socialist Party--Different (SP.A) and Parti Socialiste (PS). The cabinet was called Purple-Green cabinet or the Rainbow cabinet, because of the many political colours in the coalition. Agalev supplied two ministers Magda Aelvoet who became Vice-Prime Minister and Minister for Public Health and the Environment and Eddy Boutmans who became Minister for Development Cooperation. The party also joined the Flemish government, which was composed of the same Flemish parties Agalev, SP.A and VLD. Mieke Vogels became the Flemish Minister for Wellbeing and Development Cooperation and Vera Dua became Minister for Agriculture and the Environment..." [Spretnak and Capra, 176]

Elsewhere, it was noted that this coalition started to undermine (positively) the repressive and civil rights destabilizing 'drug war' policies. From January 26, 2001: “The coalition of the left-liberal Liberal Reform Party and Agalev, the Belgian Greens, defeated the conservative Social Christian Party in the wake of recent dioxin scares, and the new official attitude toward marijuana reflects that political realignment."

However, the following occurred soon after, a.k.a., variant one and variant two crimes. An extended summary and then direct quote shows election fraud in Belgium ousted the Green Party.

US Government Exports Election Fraud To Belgium
By Thomas Deflo, Online Journal, 12-1-2004

-----------------------------------

“On May 18, 2003, the Belgian, Flemish Green Party by the name of Agalev (now Groen!) got crushed in the Belgian elections....It is only now that I dare to write down my testimony, because I was harassed and intimidated for over a year.

In Belgium, the whole voting chain, by royal law, is controlled by the Ministry of Interior. Under the veil of 'security,' the counting of the votes is totally opaque to external, parliamentary oversight. I witnessed this personally as an official delegate for the Green Party during election day in the municipality of Schaerbeek. Party delegates were not allowed to witness the tally: it was strictly forbidden to enter the rooms where the counting process occurred. Party members simply had to wait for a sheet of paper with the supposed results to be handed over to them.

Present administrators, not the least the sitting election judge, were as far from neutral as possible, chanting victory as they 'read' the results for their preferred party. I was dumbfounded to see how what were clearly party stooges were in charge of counting the votes. Fortunately, there is one last hope for a party witness to have some impact on the voting system: he can write down his remarks in an official document, which can then be used by the party, if wanted, to file a protest and demand a recount. This official document is the so-called 'Proces Verbal'.

At the end of the day, however - and here, the suspicion was obvious - the sitting judge refused to prepare the document.

This was in clear violation with the proper election procedure.

All polls had indicated a share of around 8% of votes for the Green Party. In Belgium, a party is not allowed to stay in Parliament if it drops under 5%. A week later elections were held and miraculously Agalev got exactly 4.9%. The Green Party had to leave the Parliament and the government."

That's the basic story. Fuller detail follows:

On May 18, 2003, the Belgian, Flemish Green Party by the name of Agalev (now Groen!) got crushed in the Belgian elections. The ecological party supposedly lost two thirds of its electorate and all its seats in the federal Parliament. In reality, the election was a fraud, performed on foreign soil by the CIA with the help of the complicit Belgian State Security. A very successful coup.

It is only now that I dare to write down my testimony, because I was harassed and intimidated for over a year.

The reason for the coup's success lay in its long preparation. During the preceding years, Green Party members were criticized and ridiculed in the majority of media outlets, some falsely accused of judicial wrongdoings. This propaganda was orchestrated, as the CIA has done in so many other coups around the world. The source of this propaganda evidently came from the Belgian CIA-linked State Security, under the direction of Koen Dassen, and was produced by the US embassy.

This relentless attempt to skew the public mind set, also known as psy-ops, slowly started paying off. The rather gullible Belgian people absorbed the negative portraying of the ecological party, with no clue as to the propaganda's real origin nor to its eventual purpose: to make a total defeat at the election credible. Many media corporations lost all sense of objectivity and cooperated in order to effectively destroy the Green Party's public image.

The election fraud was next prepared by a fraudulent poll in an allied newspaper, exactly one week before voting day. All polls had indicated a share of around 8% of votes for the Green Party. The fraudulent poll indicated less than 5%. In Belgium, a party is not allowed to stay in Parliament if it drops under 5%. A week later elections were held and miraculously Agalev got exactly 4.9%. The Green Party had to leave the Parliament and the government. This signified the end of a progressive, left-wing party in Flemish politics.

Fundamental to a soft coup d'etat, of course, is the vote fraud itself.

Just like in the U.S., Belgians vote mainly by way of touch screen machines.

The system is transparently prone to fraud. The voters receive magnetic cards which are inserted in the voting machine slot. The cards then register the votes, and must be retracted from the machine to be brought back to the local booth computer, swallowing all cards and supposedly adding up their results on a floppy disk. Upon closure of the voting bureau, all floppy disks from all voting stations are then centralized in the local city hall and processed behind closed curtains.

In Belgium, the whole voting chain, by royal law, is controlled by the Ministry of Interior. Under the veil of 'security,' the counting of the votes is totally opaque to external, parliamentary oversight. I witnessed this personally as an official delegate for the Green Party during election day in the municipality of Schaerbeek. Party delegates were not allowed to witness the tally: it was strictly forbidden to enter the rooms where the counting process occurred. Party members simply had to wait for a sheet of paper with the supposed results to be handed over to them. Present administrators, not the least the sitting election judge, were as far from neutral as possible, chanting victory as they 'read' the results for their preferred party. I was dumbfounded to see how what were clearly party stooges were in charge of counting the votes.

Fortunately, there is one last hope for a party witness to have some impact on the voting system: he can write down his remarks in an official document, which can then be used by the party, if wanted, to file a protest and demand a recount. This official document is the so-called 'Proces Verbal'. At the end of the day, however - and here, the suspicion was obvious - the sitting judge refused to prepare the document. This was in clear violation with the proper election procedure.

http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120104Deflo/120104deflo.html

2. Die Grunen in Germany: the Uses of Third Parties for Greencoating Unsustainable Policies

Second, Die Grunen in Germany may as well be a dead Green movement because it failed to change the unsustainable context in which it participated and thus only became useful as a greencoating arrangement for unsustainability instead. It has become an example of variant two--how it is useful for pre-existing unsustainability-promoting parties and interests to greencoat themselves to continue the same policies by being in power wrapped in a novel symbolic spin or disguise. A recent story or two (or three) about the Green Party in Germany can be an object lesson concerning what the bioregional state avoids and what characterizes the difference of its approach of a path to sustainability, than simply expecting a novel informal political party moving into the state will get to sustainability. It's endlessly fascinating, like a slow moving tragedy with the expected outcome already known, to watch the German Greens self-destruct and get co-opted. Die Grunen has just started exhibiting neo-liberalist sentiment in Germany:

"The document was developed under the auspices of Fritz Kuhn and Matthias Berninger, the former state secretary of the Green Party environmental and consumer protection minister, Renate Künast. Other authors included several Green Party bundestag (federal parliament) deputies who in the past were linked to business-friendly policies.

Gerhard Schick, at 34 the youngest author, came directly to the Greens from a neo-liberal think tank. He attained a doctorate in political economy and worked at the Walter Eucken Institute and the Free-Market Foundation, and more recently worked as a project manager for the Bertelsmann Foundation. Walter Eucken was the joint founder of so-called ordo-liberalism, the German variant of neo-liberalism. According to experts, the Free-Market Foundation is financed by the engineering employers and some manufacturing families. According to Ulrich Müller of "Lobby Control," it provides ideas for the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Liberal Democrats (FDP). The Bertelsmann Foundation is one of the largest lobbying groups for German big business, with influence in all fields of policy, and in particular in educational policy.

The Greens' new economic programme is a further step towards a government coalition....When the first draft was presented, [Green] party head Fritz Kuhn already said that his party would "prioritise" economic policy...[T]he most senior Green, Joschka Fischer [starting as a revolutionary worker organizer],...no longer wastes his time with Green Party conference wranglings, but speaks directly [to transnational corporations and bankers]....The recently published Bundestag report on parliamentary deputies' supplementary earnings records that in 2006, Fischer gave 12 lectures, earning at least €7,000 apiece (greater sums are not indicated; but the actual fees will no doubt have been far higher). The audience for his lectures were mainly bankers from major players such as Barclays Capital, DWS Investment and the MainFirst Bank."

So far, Die Grunen greencoated unsustainable warmongering coalition governments in Germany in 1998 (where Die Grunen supported German NATO pre-emptive war on Yugoslavia). Die Grunen in Germany are now greencoating neo-liberalism ideologies. Neocons jump into Die Grunen, and use it to out 'neo' the discredited neo-liberals by attempting to carry on the same depradative policies in a novel 'possessed' informal party using different symbolism to justify the same old unsustainable thing. They are attempting to get people to believe that sustainability can come from a trickle down theory of crumbs off the corporate or bankers table? That has not worked before. Though what has worked instead is party co-option of Die Grunen.

Examples of using the Green Party to greenwash pre-existing and continuing unsustainability can be see in [1] the mere concern over symbolic politics of putting Joschka Fischer, head of a minority party, in the Vice Chancellor position in 1998 while actual power was kept away from them (the Belgian Green were given just such a Vice position); [2] Die Grunen's near total support for German NATO pre-emptive warfare on Yugoslavia (led by U.S.’s Bill Clinton's attack on it). The level of inversion and co-option in Die Grunen is clear when [3] Die Grunen lambastes anti-war peace parades (peace being one of their foundation principles), certainly because such peace parades reflect badly on "Die Grunen, AG" as they lose their original principles.

Despite or rather because of only tiny percentages, they were getting into a situation where they were promoted to greenwash a still unsustainable arrangement, where their services are seen as useful in terms of the part they play for ongoing unsustainable parties--for greencoating others' same policies, instead of working toward systemic change. Remember however, the tiny percentages are only representative of small spectrum slice of the majority of green sentiment, and what is problematic is the mistaken attempt to put all greeness in one party from the start. See previous posts on this point.

This "neoliberally useful Die Grunen movement" of only a tiny wedge of greeness occurs a decade after the suspicious double murder/suicide deaths of the original vocal leaders of Die Grunen, Petra Kelley and Gert Bastian. On Bastian:

"[S]ince leaving the Army and joining the Green party--and later being elected to the Bundestag as a Green parliamentarian--Bastian has received a large number of angry, sometimes life-threatening letters from German men. We suggested that his action threatened the connection between manhood and actual or potential violence on which many men's identity rests....He agreed that this is often the case, but told us of the network of like-minded military men, mostly retired NATO generals, that has developed [an open anti-militaristic sensibility that allows even ex-generals to] enter...the Greens. In September 1983, when he spoke at the National War College in Washington, DC, he held a poster that showed the signatures of 15 [West German] generals opposing deployment of a new missiles in Europe, and the audience of 280 generals and colonels applauded. The college witnessed a reversal of traditional roles that day, as a woman, Petra Kelly, presented the military and political positions [of the Green Party] and a man, Bastian, related his personal story. Bastian told of having been used in his youth by the Nazi government, who convinced young men to join the Army because Germany have been attacked by aggressive nations. Later, when he learned that Germany in every case had been the aggressor, he was shaken by the betrayal. Because young people can be so easily misled and used, Bastian maintains, it is the duty of older people with their wiser perspective to expose the systems of violence, oppression, and mass murder. His message and Kelly's were received with genuine appreciation and questions about the moral force of Green politics that far exceeded the depth of previous questions from State Department personnel....Bastian is one of the chief architects of the Greens' program for a secure alternative to militarism, and he has taken part in the front lines of numerous peace demonstrations. He and a majority of Greens strongly endorse -- and live -- the concept of active, nonviolent resistance."

Though hardly living it long. With their non-violent commitment, that is why it is strange to see them both 'exit' with such a violent end: the strange double murder/suicide of Bastian and Kelly as their party was opposing the reunification of Germany. If we wanted to talk motive for murder, the (U.S. intelligence-connected) Project Gladio pro-NATO network in European countries had been sabotaging democracy and elections, even organizing rightwing political terrorism to do it. Killing Bastian and Kelly sounds very similar to a Gladio operation, particularly given the motive of Die Grunen wanting to take Germany of out NATO:

"The Greens are probably the only party in West Germany that does not favor a reunified a German state. They believe the modern nation-state is inherently dangerous, particularly now that security is construed within the framework of nuclearism. As Petra Kelly expressed it, "Nation-states are very egotistical, chauvinistic, and competitive." An additional reason to seek an alternative to reunification was relayed to us by Gert Bastian, who, with Kelly, is the foremost architect of the Greens' anti-militarism proposals and spokesman for withdrawal from NATO. [Spretnak and Capra, 60-61]

Before their suspicious deaths, they argued German reunification and continued German NATO involvement would only lead to further militarism. Since the purpose of NATO is over (the protection against the USSR that collapsed), NATO can only be dangerous and imperialistic from now on, they argued.

It seems Kelly and Bastian were correct. Germany as a NATO member helped the United States/NATO invade Yugoslavia shortly thereafter even with a co-opted Die Grunen Green Party at the helm as well.

3. Douglas Campbell, Green Candidate for Governor in Michigan

The third example is an example more openly 'variant two' in criminality. In 2002, Douglas Campbell, a legal Green candidate for Governor in Michigan was physically carried off a stage and roughed up by police. Physically carried, and then dropped and piled on for good fascist fun in the land of the unfree. This led to the breaking of the candidate’s ribs. Instead of being taken to the hospital for his injuries, he was taken to jail for ‘trespassing’.

This charge implies that a public debate for governor is private property--assuredly false.

Campbell was attempting to get into an artificially limited closed private meeting pretending it was an open debate in the so-called ‘land of the free’ since he was a legal candidate for Governor.

Pictures below show other parties on stage pretending that nothing is going on. The first is a picture of Michigan Green, Douglas Campbell, being carried off the podium where he seated himself with other legal candidates. The second picture is of him being dropped on the stage by the several policemen carrying him, perhaps intentionally (given the way one is intentionally laying on him) for being ‘uppity’ and seating himself at a public debate with other legal candidates.

Michigan Green Party Candidate for Governor Tackled and Arrested
by marco
27 May 2002

For more info on this, you can contact Mr. Campbell at his residence (248) 542-5216. U.S Green Party candidate for Michigan Governor Douglas Campbell was arrested on stage and charged with trespassing after being invited to a debate.

Just as the candidates were being seated, event host Dana Debel motioned the police to arrest Douglas for no apparent reason. Douglas was tackled to the floor and handcuffed then hauled off to Brighton Jail where he was charged with trespassing then released after four hours. Michigan Democratic Representative David Bonior was on stage and witnessed [i.e., acquiesced to] this occurrence.

Campbell wrote soon after: “Some people try to say that I was not a properly qualified candidate, but the Michigan Bureau of Elections says otherwise:…”

“So much for unity among tree huggers. At last week’s Gubernatorial Candidate Forum on the Environment, thrown by the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, the Green Party’s candidate for governor was dragged offstage, cuffed and taken to jail. That’s what pesky Douglas Campbell gets for showing up where he’s not invited [sic, it was an invitation to all candidates in the paper] and taking the seat earmarked for former governor and current Democratic candidate Jim Blanchard.

Police providing security at the event lifted Campbell from his perch and hauled him away after he ignored repeated requests to exit, says Dana Debel, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund. Things got downright slapstick—police and the burly Campbell toppled over as the estimated 800 audience members settled in for the show.

The debate at Brighton High School, co-sponsored by the Detroit Free Press and University of Michigan Public Television, was specifically for gubernatorial candidates running in the Democratic and Republican primaries on Aug. 6, says Debel. “Once you establish criteria, if you change it for one person you have to change it for everybody. We had to establish limiting criteria because we were producing this for television,” says Debel. She adds that she informed Campbell and the Green Party well in advance that they could not participate [in this "Gubernatorial Candidate Forum on the Environment"!]

“That’s a disingenuous argument for maintaining the status quo and eliminating people with new ideas,” scoffs Campbell. “The Free Press story said all candidates for governor would be invited.”

A more accurate description, says Campbell, would have been “all candidates from big parties that won’t rock the boat.”

“If you’re going to have a forum on environmental issues, then why not invite the one party that’s had environmental issues on its agenda from its very inception?” said Marc Reichardt, who chairs the Green Party of Michigan. Unlike Dems and Republicans, Greens and other so-called third parties will select their gubernatorial candidates at party conventions. Campbell was charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing. We hear that, during the few hours spent in the clink, he put down his thoughts in what he’s titled “Letter from Brighton.” [read it here] Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud."

4. Libertarian and Green U.S. Presidential Candidates Arrested in 2004, for Attempting to Debate Other Candidates; in 2007, Much the Same Gatekeeping

Fourth example of systemic organize crime occurred on the national level in the USA. Back in 2004, both the legal Green and the Libertarian candidates were arrested in non-free America attempting to get into a closed debate. Here are some pictures:

(Legal Presidential Candidate Badarnik’s arrest armband in ‘the land of the free,’ for seeking to debate other legal candidates openly. Larger original photograph.)

“[Libertarian candidate] Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb were arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 8, 2004, for an act of civil disobedience [sic, actually they were attempting to deliver a legal document, so stopping them was illegal]. Badnarik and Cobb were protesting their exclusion from the presidential debates of the 2004 presidential election campaign [in echoes of legal candidate Douglas Campbell's attempts do to the same in Michigan in 2002.] They were arrested after crossing a police barricade in an attempt to serve an Order to Show Cause to the Commission on Presidential Debates.”

Since they were kept from serving a legal summons of explanation, it was yet another crime perpetrated by the Democratic and Republican Parties.

ABC claims that this is the ‘full Democratic Party candidates for President’—while intentionally leaving out Dennis Kucinich, the only one who shows any difference from the other carbon copy candidates. To top it off and make that lie of omission a reality, MSNBC ‘uninvited’ Kucinich from the debate (after inviting him!) after online polls showed that Kucinich had won the previous debate over other Democratic candidates. Despite Kucinich winning a straw poll of who won the debate, and being forced to win a court case to appear as a legal candidate on the next stage in the Nevada Democratic Primary, the MSNBC network appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court to keep him out of the so-called ‘public’ debate.

The private television network justified this change of policy, ahem, 'based on his low totals in New Hampshire'...despite winning in Americans' minds the national TV debate over other candidates?

Something is amiss, and it is New Hampshire's vote totals. As we shall see below, it is hardly a state to be trusted for vote security or honesty.

In keeping well-liked Kucinich Democratic Candidate out of the TV spotlight, the court waited until only one hour before debate showtime to hand down its ruling against Kucinich, to keep Kucinich from further exercising legal options and appealing to the Supreme Court in time. Talk about a quiet coordination of corruption.

As a blogger noted: "ABC makes like Fox News, cuts Kucinich out of the picture: It's one thing for Fox News' Roger Ailes to get his jollies mixing up Obama and Osama, but you'd expect something classier from ABC News. ABC was the sponsor of last Sunday's presidential forum, which many viewers polled online thought Dennis Kucinich had won."

"But before the questioning started, the Ohio congressman seemed to be a persona non grata around the network. Even as I write this, ABC has Kucinich cropped out of the photo running on the page inviting viewers to "tune in and talk back":

"Less than an hour before the start of MSNBC's Democratic presidential candidates debate in Las Vegas, Nevada's highest court overturned an earlier ruling that prohibited the network from shutting Cleveland's Dennis Kucinich out of the debate.

Nevada's Supreme Court decided the lower court "exceeded its jurisdiction" on Monday in ordering that Kucinich be allowed to participate in the debate after parent network NBC revised its participation criteria to exclude him. [Since the criteria was from "top four" to "top three", and since it only applied to Kucinich in this case, it is hard to argue it was without political motivation to exclude him since he was the only one which this applied to in practice.]

At first, the network said it would include candidates who placed in the top four in either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire primary, or who placed in the top four in a national news media poll conducted after Iowa's contest.

Although Kucinich [supposedly...] obtained no delegates in Iowa and [supposedly...] less than two percent of New Hampshire's [highly fraudulent and bogus totals, see below!] Democratic vote, he qualified for the debate under the network's initial criteria with a fourth place showing in a Gallup poll of likely New Hampshire voters, where he had three percent support.

After Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson dropped out of the race, NBC [suddenly faced with the fact that Kucinich was in their criteria suddenly fourth, they moved the line in the sand and] decided to limit entry to the top three finishers in Iowa and New Hampshire, NBC Political News Director Chuck Todd said in an affidavit. [However, they had previously invited the top four candidates, and Kucinich was still in the race and was #4 even after going through the wringer in the heavily rigged New Hampshire vote fraud--more on that below. So the decision to limit the network TV debate to three only could have taken place with the only person affected in mind since there was no one else: Kucinich.]

"The revised criteria governing the January 15 debate are viewpoint neutral [even though the decision to go to three in the 'debate' could only apply to one person in the world, Kucinich?] and are in no way designed to exclude any particular candidate based on his or her views," Todd's affidavit said. "Instead, the revised criteria represent a good faith editorial choice of a privately owned cable network to limit debate participants based on the [vote fraud tallied] status of their campaigns." [However, to the contrary, the network itself is the origin of the limitation instead of the mere medium of the candidates' own limitations, as they argue.]

Kucinich's campaign alleged that NBC revised its criteria "to specifically exclude the diverse and anti-war voice of Kucinich and his grass-roots supporters."

"The Debate is not a true presidential primary debate without including all credible candidates, but instead is effectively an endorsement of the candidates selected by NBC," said Kucinich's legal brief, which also alleged the network was violating its responsibility to serve the public interest and had breached its contract with Kucinich.

On Monday, Clark County Senior Judge J. Charles Thompson sided with Kucinich and ordered NBC to allow his participation.

The network told the Supreme Court that Thompson's decision infringed on its First Amendment rights under the Constitution by forcing "a private media actor to give access to a speaker it has otherwise chosen not to feature," and described Kucinich's breach of contract claim as "meritless."

"Mr. Kucinich's argument confuses acceptance of an invitation to appear on television with acceptance of an offer to enter into a contract," the network said. "If such an unprecedented theory is adopted here, it would mean that news organizations would be forbidden from making timely decisions about who or what to feature in their programming based on daily developments in news for fear that a previously invited guest could assert a breach of contract claim."

Nevada's Supreme Court agreed with NBC.

"We conclude that the district court manifestly abused its discretion in determining that a contract existed between the parties," said its order.

[Highlighting the systemic vote fraud in New Hampshire that has been in place for decades (more on that below),] [i]n other Kucinich-related news, the congressman's presidential campaign delivered a check to New Hampshire's Secretary of State to pay for a recount of Democratic ballots in the state's presidential primary. Kucinich requested the recount after questions arose about high tallies for Hillary Clinton in parts of the state where ballots were counted by machine. Kucinich [diplomatically] said he didn't expect the recount would affect his showing, but wanted questions to to be addressed. [A Republican candidate wanted a recount in New Hampshire's so-called official tally as well. Given the massive vote fraud history of New Hampshire, this should have happened decades ago.]

Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd [of New Hampshire] said the recount will begin tomorrow morning in Concord and is expected to take several weeks. She said a longshot Republican candidate who sought a recount did not pay for the procedure yesterday [sic], and a GOP recount won't occur unless he does so. [Actually, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd was lying to the press, the Republican Candidate did provide the money in time though it seemed that the bank refused to give it to the state letting the state say it was 'not received in time.' Later, New Hampshire said they would indeed accept the funds for the Republican recount of the New Hampshire primary.]

In the equally unleveled-playing-field of the televised "Republican candidate ‘debate,’" Presidential Candidate Dr. Ron Paul (like Kucinich, as virtually the only example of true difference and thus substantive policy choice for the voters in his party) was kept from speaking for 45 minutes by biased interviewers.

Throughout, corporate media have falsely projected and portrayed that his conservative, anti-Iraq war, Republican-libertarian movement is without a following. See this classic example of media manipulation from ABC News coverage to ignore Ron Paul:

Mitt Romney Campaign Chair Attacks Ron Paul Supporterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm8iS66FAwE&feature=related
[This video was removed by the user, though it was indeed interesting window into U.S. politics. The Campaign Chair rips a Ron Paul sign out of a supporter's hands, and then when it falls to the ground, the Romney Campaign Chair steps on the Ron Paul sign to keep the person from picking it back up. All the while, he is just standing there very still, silently and malevolently staring at Ron Paul supporters, as if asking to start a fight with his foot on their sign.]

5. Current Statewide Vote Fraud

Fifth, given both Democratic and Republican candidate concern and funding of primary recounts in New Hampshire in 2007, remember that the same recounting issues surfaced in 2004's primaries.

The simple story is that it seems that vote fraud frameworks come to play to artificially manufacture numbers to keep the ‘proper’ candidates ahead in the media even if no one really supports them: this happened for Kerry over Dean in New Hampshire Democratic Primaries in 2004, where vote fraud assuredly sealed it for Kerry. Everything you want to know (or want to avoid knowing) at this link:

Why Kerry afraid to speak on vote fraud? KERRY USED ES&S/DIEBOLD E-VOTE RIG TO OUST DEAN!
author: worthy repost
”KERRY USED ES&S VOTE MACHINES TO RIG THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, TO OUST DEAN, SEALING THE SKULL AND BONES'ERS IN EACH "PARTY." KERRY IS JUST AS GUILTY AS BUSH OF VOTE FRAUD. THAT IS WHY KERRY IS QUIET. Dean would have been the Democratic Party Ticket, legally,--until e-vote fraud came to the "rescue" for the aristocratic elites of the U.S. [It happens for the Republican in the "New Hampshire Effect" as well: ] Moreover, did you know that VP George H. W. Bush won a weird "unexpected upset" (due to e-vote machines?) in 1988 against Republican front runner Bob Dole. This happened in New Hampshire as well. Everyone knows that Kerry's father was high up in the CIA, just like Bush's father, right? Everyone knows that Kerry covered up for Bush in the Iran/Contra Commission (and covered up for the Bush family in the BCCI investigation), right? The Iran/Contra commission was the "Kerry Commission." BCCI was (partially) investigated by Kerry as well. Small world, eh? Kerry will avoid this like the plague, because he is part of the Bush family networks, and a beneficiary of vote fraud himself to get to the Democratic Ticket in 2004!”http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/303703.shtml

So old-fashioned vote fraud against Dr. Ron Paul in New Hampshire assuredly helped demote his campaign as it has so many others put through the wringer of corruption of the New Hampshire "election process." It even looks like Ron Paul actually won New Hampshire by a landslide in reality, though vote fraud and artificial media totals demoted him and then the media ignored the story:

It's here as well. Later, the Boston Globe changes their story about the Paul landslide (without recording they changed it as they do all other stories), and they still kept Ron Paul out of list of "all Republican Candidates" showing the ongoing bias of the newspaper.

Seventh, for the first of two cherries on top of this stinking pile of vote corruption and state crime, we can see the whole United States instead of only individual states, as “one nation, under vote fraud.” And it is hardly only a party issue--it's a framework of vote fraud that crosses both the major television/print media in cahoots with the Democratic and Republican parties to keep out competitors. Watch and listen to someone who researched this "media/party interlock" for 25 years, James Collier.

"This is a RealityExpander broadcast of James Collier on access TV in Connecticut in 1996. The show is hosted by Walter Reddy & Jill St. James. Both Collier brothers were killed in a "robbery" attempt just a few months prior to the 2000 election debacle. Coincidence? After uncovering a massive vote scam in Dade County, Florida in 1970, independent journalists James and Kenneth Collier spent the next quarter century investigating America's multi-billion dollar vote rigging industry -- and confronting the corporate government and media officials who control it. The Colliers now challenge every American to answer a new question: Who counts your vote? The truth is, there is no way for you to know. In fact, you are not allowed to know. "Votescam" offers a wealth of FBI documented evidence proving that, for the past forty years, elections in the United States have come under the domination of a handful of powerful and corrupt people: Secretaries of State, Election Supervisors, Judges, owners and editors of the major media outlets, voting equipment corporations (like Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), and assorted key members of the elections establishment, including the League of Women Voters. These groups [with select media monopolies working with them] have assured the dominance of the two party system, unfettered corporate control over government, and media censorship of issues most important to the American people, including the cover-up of vote fraud evidence."

It's easier to censor vote fraud evidence (or to project false totals from the start) than ever before: It has led to novel and noble attempts to get the word out on unreported 'real world' stories:

Eighth, for the other cherry, does it help to know that Executives at New Hampshire's Diebold Vote Counting Firm were Convicted of Narcotics Trafficking? Does it help put your faith in voting for a patient, honest informal party as a route to change…when the Secretary of State of New Hampshire was unaware that this key executive in the private firm (that programs and "counts" 80% of the state's ballots on hackable, error-prone Diebold voting machines) is a convicted narcotics trafficker?

If you disliked that, you’ll dislike a huge orchard of cherry blossoms of corruption mentioned by Daniel Hopsicker’s reporting, quoted in Toward A Bioregional State:

“Convicted Felons, ‘Shadowy Financiers’ Own Companies Counting Votes,” Mad Cow Morning News (November 15 2004), here or here: “An investigation into the surprisingly-sordid history of America’s election services industry has revealed that executives and owners of the two largest companies, ES&S and Sequoia Pacific, have been convicted of bribery and suborning public officials in more than a dozen states….Investigating the ownership of the two companies that together dominate the American elections industry reveals evidence of routine and systemic bribery of public officials, not just here but overseas (the recent Prime Minister of Ireland, to give just one example.)”

As for networks of treason, listen to computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis, Florida Republican, who was hired to 'control the vote in South Florida' for a company, Wang Enterprises. That company was connected to treason with the Chinese Government (connected to Representative Tom Feeney, then the Majority Leader of the Florida House of Representatives). Wang Enterprises punishment for treason, in Florida? Very light. They were fined one dollar. No one investigated Curtis's claims. That's high corruption across the Democrats and Republicans both complicit in finding illegal ways to rig voting that fails to go their way.Clint Curtis Tells His Story - Eternal Vigilance Clip8 min 21 sec

"Clint Curtis tells the startling story of how he developed vote-rigging software at the request of Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL). From a bold new documentary by David Earnhardt called "Eternal Vigilance," this 8-minute clip also features investigative journalist Brad Friedman."

"Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the House of Florida at the time, currently US Representative...) tried to pay him to rig election vote counts."

This has been going on before 2000 according to the Collier brothers. It has been going on for over 40 years electronically at least within Florida though perhaps in other states since then, as well they argued.

Lynn Landes argues systemic vote fraud in the USA at least electronically is linked with the aftermath of the Kennedy Assassination. In 1963 began as an anti-democratic putsch with and following the assassination. Electronic ballot tabulators arrive all at once in 1964. So did the centralized vote 'information' distribution in federal elections of "Voter News Service." The media angle of the conspiracy featured in the Collier brothers' discussions of how only a 'media-major networks/vote machine' interlock and coordination was required. Only then you could call elections via the networks the way someone wanted, and then you had the leisure of resetting the digital or physical totals later to match the invented projections told the people.

[1] represented President Bush in the Bush-Gore 2000 Florida election vote recount,
[2] personally represents Governor Jeb Bush,
[3] hired the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on election day 2000--after which Justice Scalia cast one of the deciding votes which placed Bush in the presidency about seven weeks later, and
[4] Miami-headquartered firm partially funded/sponsored delegation to Israel by House-Senate Armed Services Committee members and government contractors to witness and be briefed on interrogation resistance procedures and torture techniques....One of the lobbyists joining them to Israel included Jack London, CEO of CACI International Inc., American defense contractor firm implicated by U.S. Major General Taguba in torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.
[5] have prominent administrative positions in Massachusetts 9/11 Fund also involving Bush family banking house Brown Brothers Harriman
[6] one appointed as the General Counsel of the Department of the Navy and its Office of Naval Intelligence just 90 days before the 9-11 attacks
[7] has a Bush '04 "pioneer" fundraiser & DC lobbyist, Abramoff [at the same moment as #9!]
[8] fined $77,000 in 1998 for soliciting illegal foreign political donation from German citizen Thomas Kramer
[9] FIRM PARTNER IS MARVIN ROSEN, the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (DNC) FINANCE CHAIRMAN who supervised activities of convicted fund-raiser and DNC vice-chairman of finance John Huang who had to return half of $3 million+ raised by him because of contributions from illegal foreign sources. [So Greenberg Traurig's known criminal (and drug money linked) Abramoff and DeLay networks of funding of Republican elections is very close to Greenberg Traurig's Marvin Rosen with his John Huang 'issues']
[10] firm works with 9-11 victims on planning out their U.S. gov't hushmail/bribery estates.
[11] Bush owes Greenberg firm nearly one million dollars for work done by dozens of lawyers and paralegals--leaving some to question why a Republican candidate would hire a Democratic lawyer from a Democratic firm...
[12] Republican lobbyist Abramoff worked for them as well.

"Who owns Florida's gambling boats? No one knows: no state or federal oversight. No one licenses operators. No one ensures games aren't rigged. No one ensures boats aren't used to launder money. No one investigates organized crime that seems to run it & use it to money launder (via Abramoff's connections [to DeLay]) to buy U.S. elections. This same mafia money likely circles back into DeLay's "separate" money laundering and election fraud indictments in Texas. --- Florida's cruises-to-nowhere represent "the largest unregulated gambling industry in the United States," said Bill Thompson, a professor of gambling at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and nationally recognized expert on the industry. They gross at least $170 million a year. That's just a number they report voluntarily. No one knows the true 'take.' Everyone assumes there's a 'skim.' "A casino is a cash business. You could have money laundering and skimming," Keith Copher, chief of enforcement for Nevada Gaming Control Board. "When you obtain money illegally through drug sales and other methods, you need to find a way to launder it, to make it look like a legal source. Regulation is needed to prevent this." While "Florida authorities" piously oppose gambling, their inaction speaks for itself, and now shows itself to have connections to the "9.11 drugrunner false flagger network" that frequented these SunCruz Casino Bush-connected Abramoff's boats...for what purpose? Another interesting link between 9-11 and Abramoff is the Wally Hillard issue, below....The breathtaking scope of "Cruisegate" could make it the biggest American political scandal since Iran Contra. Should its tawdry details fully come to light, it might eclipse even the Watergate Scandal."

The Abramoff/DeLay networks come to light in the story told by recently railroaded and even more recently released ex-Democratic Governor of Alabama, Seigelman. Strangely, the only time the interviewer nervously attempts to interrupt the conversation is when he wants to ignore the connection the ex-Governor of Alabama mentions that ties everything back to the illegal money cycle connected to felon Abramoff. Watch the 20 minute interview with Siegelman.

10. The Internationalization of Vote Fraud Against Third Party Challenges

Tenth, the expansion of the American Empire's political clients (against their own local populations) has been built on the internationalization of vote fraud machines. Documents illustrate that the Reagan and Bush administration supported computer manipulation of voting machine totals in both Noriega's rise to power in Panama and in Marcos' attempt to retain power in the Philippines. Additionally, the US-supplied voting machines in Nicaraguan elections found that the leftist/marxist/nationalist Sandinista Nicaraguan revolutionaries 'lost' the election they promised to hold--lost it to the U.S. sponsored candidate in Nicaragua.

More recently, investigative reporters Hopsicker and Wayne Madsen noted that this American-made vote fraud, crime (and unsustainability) starts to go international into European countries when you look at this. Remember Belgium, above? It's larger than that. Here’s something from Wayne Madsen on the internationalization of e-vote fraud to stop many more locally representative pressures against unsustainable state governments. Sarkozy seems to have stolen the French Presidential Runoff election with American ES&S e-vote machines:

"Sarkozy ‘won’ assuredly by vote fraud against a left-green candidate for the French Presidency. The French election, from the start, has been plagued by election fraud -- bogus polling data, false exit polls, and electronic voting machine and machine counting irregularities were hallmarks of the first presidential election round. ES&S's I-Votronic machines were used in both elections across France. Only Sarkozy's party was supportive of the machines, with all the other political parties calling for a moratorium on their use. Turnout in the French election was 85 percent. With large turnouts historically favoring the left in France, the exit polling and actual polling were at odds with the turnout -- an indication of massive election fraud."

Similar polling irregularities were experienced in recent elections in Scotland, Wales, and England. Wayne Madsen reports that

"In Scotland, 100,000 ballots, thought to mostly be cast for the pro-independence [i.e., localist representative] Scottish National Party, were declared "spoiled" in Scotland's election. That "glitch" cost the Scottish Nationalists a larger majority in the Scottish Parliament. Irregularities in Wales and England similarly affected larger margins for Welsh and Cornish nationalists.

"As the Bretons and Corsicans will soon discover with Sarkozy, [bio-]regional [representative] nationalism is anathema to the globalist neo-con agenda, particularly the international bankers who want strong centralized control and minimal devolution of power to local and regional governments. The electoral malfeasance of neo-cons in manipulating elections in France, Britain, Canada, the United States, Italy, Australia, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and other countries will remain a problem until the people, acting through the power of progressive, anti-globalist, and anti-capitalist governments, seize control, via whatever means necessary, of the media, the voting and vote counting process, and the opinion polling mechanisms."

And the vote-frauding American Empire is coming home to conquer as well. Look at the 'war map' evidence of a national strategy to introduce unauditable vote machines only in areas of more contentious, local politics. This helps explain why certain areas likely have received special fraud facilitating electronic voting machine treatment (based on predictable 30 year patterns in certain areas left to right voting).

"The map of where the voting machines are for 2004 is overlaid on a 10-region block area of predictable voting pattern demographics for the past 30 years. These 10 areas represent how the United States has voted in presidential elections, as blocks, in the past 30 years. This is information that would be common knowledge in any Bush 2004 planning team. It shows where the insecure, unverifiable electronic voting machines are: it reveals that Bush is out to get the 2004 vote in a very illegal manner. It reveals that the hideous 'war plan' of the Bushites Neo-cons in power is to introduce electronic voting machine technology only where it will assure a Bush win--in particularly crucial contentious areas--while leaving durable Republican-voting areas as a low priority areas for electronic voting machine introduction. This is a national phenomenon. This is a slow motion coup, and an investment in a fascist future. As mentioned above it is based on employing a 1980s strategy of corrupt voting machines used by Bush/Reagan 1980-1992 in CIA based coups, globally. In other words, the history of the networks involved here show that they have gotten away with CIA sponsored national vote fraud in the past in other countries, and they are doing it once more--though in the United States--though the very families like the Bushes [and the Clintons, just google up "Mena, Arkansas, cocaine, Governor Clinton"] that have been directly connected with the CIA. The below article is a description of these 10 durable regional areas, with commentary of how the introduction of voting machine technology differently in them has allowed the option for Bush and his henchmen to remove Bush voter opposition electronically at the polls--through nationally orchestrated vote fraud."http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/02/281692.shtml

Given these connections, it's hardly surprising that "Clinton II" in the guise of Hillary Clinton is winning suspicious important states against Obama and is (vote fraudulently?) destined to be the Democratic Candidate. And given these connections, it is unsurprising that near senile John McCain, easily controllable, came out of nowhere to become "Republican front runner" (says the media, no word on Ron Paul of course in that media/vote machine interlock).

Sometimes it's hard to tell if The Onion is really satire, or simply as it notes "the nation's finest news source":

"Embarrassed Diebold officials apologized after one of their electronic voting machines prematurely revealed the winner of our upcoming sham election."

Still want to work only for your informal party, for ‘change’?

It’s hardly enough. It’s even predictably self-defeating. Different parties will be required to work together first, and compete later (for elections), second.

All this goes to show that informal parties, by themselves, and by simply standing for election are unable to handle the level of organized crime that is embedded in protecting unsustainability and democracy from open competition. Formal institutional changes have to be started from the beginning.

The only routes available for systemic change are green constitutional engineering (with some ideas summarized here, or there’s always the book.

“[T]hird/fourth parties should take a hint from Bolivia [follow to see]. Almost the sole aim of third/fourth parties should currently be concentrating as a team on constitutional change and formal institutional change issues to make a more competitive arrangement for democracy among parties to remove pre-existing corrupt gatekeeping, instead of simply joining a pre-existing gatekeeping along a novel ideological strategic axis."

Conclusion

First, it obvious that third/fourth parties are important by themselves, otherwise such vote rigging would be absent. However, if third/fourth parties expect that elections under these conditions will be legitimate, they are mistaken.

Second, from an earlier post, an unnoticed ideological connection between Greens and Libertarians are that both have represented historically the same ecological self-interest of populations as seen in their ideologies’ histories. They are the last bastions of actual competitive democracy in the United States given fake corporatist Democrats attempting to slough off pretense of leftism or competition with the corporatist Republicans.

The Democrats want to turn themselves into RepublicanLite openly instead of covertly being it, in my opinion. Once a Bourbon Democrat always a Bourbon Democrat, anyone?

Crimes and corruptions of formal democracy are a major supporter of unsustainable policies. As argued in the book, governmental corruption is the cause of unsustainability:

"Toward A Bioregional State is a novel approach to development and to sustainability...propos[ing] that instead of sustainability being an issue of population scale, managerial economics, or technocratic planning, an overhaul of formal democratic institutions is required. This is because environmental degradation has more to do with the biased interactions of formal institutions and informal corruption. Because of corruption, we have environmental degradation. Current formal democratic institutions of states are forms of informal gatekeeping, and as such, intentionally maintain democracy as ecologically “out of sync”. He argues that we are unable to reach sustainability without a host of additional ecological checks and balances. These ecological checks and balances would demote corrupt uses of formal institutions by removing capacities for gatekeeping against democratic feedback. Sustainability is a politics that is already here—only waiting to be formally organized."

I will continue to post examples in the comments concerning crimes and questionable 'legal decisions' of the 2008 election cycle in the USA or elsewhere.

Third/fourth parties should concentrate on creating a more competitive party democracy formally--one more in-sync with reflecting voter concerns from particular environmental areas. Why? Because in terms of available polls, the majority is already green, instead of relegated toward green being a minority party participation. Given the low opinion that most Americans have for a country run by identical Democratic and Republican policy ideas, the majority (of the world as well) is tired of watching a U.S. pantomime politics, an artificially limited two party game of gatekeeping and mutual backscratching.

It recalls Quigley's quote about the U.S. "two party system" from his book Tragedy and Hope? His honest sentiments revealed "a gatekeeping power" in U.S. politics. In his view, the importance of the networks of the Council on Foreign Relations intentionally and by long term secret plan have short circuited competitive democracy by building the Democratic and Republican Parties into one creature of unrepresentative elite managerialism. Quigley's insider view of America, from his CFR heights of power across the Democrat/Republican Parties, led his book to being virtually banned in the U.S.A. for over 30 years. Quigley said:

"The two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shift in policy."

With networks of unsustainable elite managerial power and prowess like this in power in the U.S.A., steering both (or many more) parties in tandem, only a formal institutional change to bring about a more competitive democratic context and to bring about a state more institutionally "in sync" with local concerns will help us get to sustainability and democracy. Such changes as mentioned in the bioregional state do this by allowing the raised competition to increasingly appeal and reflect the local, common ecological self-interest of discrete populations instead of requiring a single (co-optable or repressible) party to do it alone.

Even though the Greens and Libertarians have different ideological and policy stances, they reflect the same ecological self-interest and on the local level people tend to work together on issues in unforseen ways while their 'national parties' are supposedly opposed [1][2][3]. Everybody lives in a watershed so the formal state should take into account in a non-partisan manner. A more accurately representative democracy innately means a more sustainable polity--particularly since the majority of the world has gone green.

-----

In the upcoming fourth section, I will talk in more detail about the green elements in libertarianism, comparing and contrasting its different current variants with both green ideologies and the bioregional state for the differences and commonalities.

About Me

A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.